POEM: Baby-ize

We awe start as twinkles in someone’s eye’s. Reflecting on this may help us recognize our common origins and shared destinies.

Baby-ize

She looked at me
Without pretension
In two me
That soul window
As easily won
As lost
From that eternal place
Re-leasing
Undivided
Tension
From where babies emerge
And we awe
Ultimately merge

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POEM: A Walker, Please

My Dad got out of the hospital yesterday, after falling on his butt and crushing a vertebrae and a disc last week. After a successful surgery to stabilize his back and reduce the pain, he was transferred to the assisted living unit (“The Harbors”) of the independent living community that he resides in. By the time the hospital discharged him and arranged transport, it was after 5 pm when he arrived. He was prescribed a walker, but the appropriate staff was not available “after hours” to professionally fit him for a walker. So, the staff told him in bureaucratic detail why they could not provide him a walker as ordered. This was unsatisfactory and unsatisfying, to say the least. To make a long story short, I skulked about and found the rehab room unlocked, where there was a pile of dozens of walkers just wading for a purpose in life. I borrowed one and snuck it back into his room. Fortunately, after the deed was done, the staff were fine with such a miraculous delivery. I was glad to leap the seemingly impassable chasm between talking the talk and walking the walk. This poetic act simply assures that my Dad is both suitably equipped and quipped.

A Walker, Please

Exiting a hospitality
Of a different kind
And still
Needing to ambulate
He sought safe harbor
With a prescription
For an assistive device
Abetting man
To take crucial steps
In rehabilitation
Of this nursing homme
Of which he got their too late
Except for their can’t do attitude
Unable to bring to heal
Such a bureaucratic chasm
Only making cross
Bye talking the talk
Such a spiritual infirmity
Incompatible with his physic
Begging to walk the walk
Fortunately, that kin due
Was awe ready there
Being
The walker you want
To sea in the whirled
And safe harbor secure
Just
Feat away
In a soulless rehab space
Was a stock pile
In riched by dear departed patience
Of dry bones crying out
For the most skeletal of purposes
Wading there
For even the sparsest of flesh
As say an 89-year-owed
Holding up
Yet won more time
As in this instant
The son shines
Through such murky daze
In an end run
Bye not just
Talking the talk
But walking the walk
In a we weigh
Delivered
No bones about it
As order doctored
Heal and tow
The possible now
Incarnate
Fully quipped

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POEM: People of Consequence

Our actions have consequences. We are people of consequence. The ends are determined by the means. Unfortunately, the inanity in our culture, which may, much of the time, seem harmless in it meaninglessness, meets up with epic crimes against humanity. My question for today is this: Will our inane culture have enough of what it takes to pull back from genocide and famine in Gaza?

People of Consequence

You go
Too Armageddon
With the inane culture you halve
Knot the inane culture
You want
It’s not the end
Just
The beginning
Of a fete
Blind sided
Breath taking
Heart stopping
And dumb founded
A death sentience
For far too many
And sum
Having reaped their stay
Teaming with means
And ends
Of all sorts
People of consequence
And knot so much

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POEM: Rat Race Religion

This poem is a meditation on the banality of evil that arises from good people doing nothing when it comes knocking at their doorstep. This accomplice-ment is aided by a blinding enmeshment in a rat race offering, justification for ignoring our siblings of God and voiding our solidarity as a sacred human family.

Rat Race Religion

The mass of deaths
In rat race religion
Cede the sap of humanity
To the war
In security
As haven unearth
With hope only Abel
To be delivered
By grave planting
And full groan souls
From wither hour weigh of life
Or wents we knot worth beings
Sow it goes
As life blood
For gotten
A hole life of have too
And we prey
For a little mettle
And how might
Wee pay
For such rent
As knocking death
And its many accomplice-ments
That will
Come to pass
Not from the passion
Of fiery spirits unleashed
But cold calculation
From mostly good hearted people

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POEM: It’s Awe Poetry

This is a poet’s poem, particularly for those poets who employ free verse, which might not be recognized as poetry. Personally, I can guarantee that my free verse is worth every penny.

It’s Awe Poetry

He said
“I don’t see how that is poetry.”
I said
“It helps if you see everything as poetry.”

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POEM: The Hole of Life

Sometimes life leaves you only shitty choices. Of coarse, in many cases, making at least some choice is better than doing nothing or living in fear. Fortunately, whether we make a choice or not, a new set of choices arise, and then another set of choices. May your days be choice…

The Hole of Life

He made his mark
Shit-stain that it may be
Though just
Perhaps
Arguably bettor
Than being scared shitless
Fore the whole of life

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POEM: Love is Never Having to Say “Thank You”

Community organizing can be difficult and thankless. I am grateful for those who do such work. Thanks! Still, at times, won’s work can become a bearin’ place, yielding cynicism and skepticism, even of those who appreciate you. Tossing aside potential allies because they don’t measure up to your own epic work is self-defeating. I suspect that carrying the torch of what we are fighting for should preserve and grow gratitude and generosity — not torch it. WARNING: This poem, a cautionary tale, is based on a true story.

Love is Never Having to Say “Thank You”

He is a model activist
He is a leader of all
He humbly declares his true intense
Don’t thank him for his work
You will not like his response
So so sorry
Just
Follow
Him
Into that promised
Land of thanklessness

The title is an allusion to quote made infamous from the 1970 movie, Love Story: “Love means never having to say you are sorry,” which is one of the stupidest movie quotes ever.

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POEM: As The Whirled Goes Bye

When I look out into the world, I often get the image of chickens running around with their heads cut off. I see an addiction to “winning” that disconnects us from creation, others and ourselves, and in supreme irony, races us to a world of losing awe that matters.  There is a deep and abiding order to creation. There is an awesome, eccentric, sacredness of every life. In a descending nihilism, there is a flurry of opportunities to embrace deep meaning, embrace one another, and embrace anew world. We are the people we have been waiting for. This is our gift — to ourselves, to each other, and to the world.

As The Whirled Goes Bye

There I was
Pain attention
To the whirled going bye
In the specious choice
Of being
Won or the other
A chicken with their head chopped off
Running a bout
Awe over
Or the undead
The most vacant of presence
With in-the-box unthinking
Vainly building AWOL
Wile humanity dissembling
Wear nothing madders
Like some wholly ghost in a dead religion
Only too flail where others secede
As change peers random
In what seams natural selection
Baring
That fucking life sentence
Or stay
Of execution
As being right is halving left
And still
I am
Perhaps not
Means
To an end

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POEM: Nobodies

The powers that be school us in learned helplessness. The powers that be want to convince you that you are a nobody, in their scheme of things. Well, good people, I know plenty of “nobodies” who are awesome wrenches in the meat grinder of posed rulers. We are sow, due the impossible, not bound buy their algorithms and all-calculating mines.

Nobodies

The man
Tolled me
Nobody believes that
Nobody is going to do that
To which I answer
You peer not to know
The same
Nobodies
Such beautiful unicorns
The great unherd
Sow due
The impossible
Schooled
In blank it statements

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POEM: This Poet’s Prayer

This poem reflects my basic spirituality of ever moving toward One’s vision of the good, even as my view is a dim reflection. The One thing that I can judge my progress on is my commitment to this path yearning to be a fully participating member of creation, giving as I have been given, and then sum, which is won.

This Poet’s Prayer

Oh Lord
I soully hope
To give
Whatever thou art
Ever moving
Toward you
Awe that mine
In your image
Mirror words
And yours
Word

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POEM: Gypsy Mother E

Mother Earth has treated us well. Let’s treat her as our one and only.

Gypsy Mother E

We had
A
Gypsy mother
Who lived
As 93 million miles from the light of her life
Who loved
Her wayward children
More than everything ails
Giving her awe
To those unruly siblings
Ogling their eternal wrest
We are gently tolled
In billions of weighs
There is no planet B
Nor C, nor D, nor E
Any grade other than A
Is an F
To our ineffable mother

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POEM: Heir Droppings

This poem goes out to the five Palestinian kids killed when an American airdrop of food crushed them after the parachute failed. This over the top “Operation Breadcrumb” does nothing to stop Israel’s illegal blocking of humanitarian aid by ground into Gaza. There are widespread reports that much of the canned food aid that does get in is rancid. Also, the U.S. continues withholding funding to UNRWA, the only relief agency that could deliver enough aid to Gaza to relieve the famine. The illegal blockage must stop, which likely depends on the U.S. ending its complicity with Israel’s  genocide through bombs, bullets and famine. U.S. complicity is a stain on the soul of America and the bringer of death to Palestinians. Let U.S. end this genocide.

Heir Droppings

Kids are looking up
In Gaza
With the American I deal
With respect to Israeli genocide
As American is the bomb
That pie in the sky
Canned circa 1948
That American apple pie
In efface
Of mañana
From heaven
Delivered today
Fresh squash
Dead on a rival
No arms waving
No chute today
And still
Boxed in a grave
Nothing to see, hear
Soully that press, release
In citing the American weigh

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POEM: Optimism — A Buy Product of Hope

There is a difference between optimism and hope. Optimism is about the inertia and trajectory of facts on the ground, while hope is a metaphysical reality that seeps into life of awe kinds amidst a dizzying array of means. Hope has the ability to shine, even most uniquely sow, when there is no reason for optimism. As Leonard Cohen put it: “There is a crack, a crack, in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

Optimism: A Buy Product of Hope

I can live without optimism
But we’ve hope
The very fabric of life
Oft peering
As well
Used
Work clothes
Not sow much as finery
As the we’d of life
Breaking through sow much concrete
And first on the seen
Striking
Casual disdain
In efface of
Growing numb-ers
Un-till souled in masses
Crapping out
Optimism
A buy product of hope
Creating
Snake ayes
In a garden of weedin’
Your back to work
Or sow they say
Only two begin agin

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POEM: Of Yores and Mind — Owed to Buffalo State Asylum for the Mentally Insane

Buffalo State Asylum for the Mentally Insane

Last summer, while visiting Buffalo, which was a serendipitously pleasant visit (except for the bedbugs, see bed bug poem), the highlight of the visit was stumbling upon this grand architectural complex. We were staying in a cool, urban farm Airbnb nearby, and walking through the neighborhoods, the two towers pictured emerged. I immediately set upon getting a closer look, having no idea what it was. I didn’t really care if it might be private property or not; I had to explore. As it turns out, this is the former Buffalo State Asylum for the Mentally Insane, of which a portion has been renovated into a fancy hotel. It is open to the public and a great place to wander around. In contrast, next to this complex, is a large, boxy institutional building which is the “new” state mental hospital — a sad example of 1960s architecture. You can get a bit of its history here and here. Buffalo is considered second only to Chicago for architecture buffs. Of course, the juxtaposition of such grand architecture and the 1888 vanguard mental health asylum demanded a poem:

Of Yores and Mind: Owed to Buffalo State Asylum for the Mentally Insane

They were committed too
Edifices of stone and mortar
Boarding the grandeur
Of the human spirit
And the epic recesses of mind
Doctoring emptied hearts
Of life’s quest inns
And undeniable whethering
Of wings of men and women
Oh so only
At times
Rehabbed
Surviving
Decades of contingencies
Of what saving
Of what parceled out
Recouping
The state
Of the art
Halfway hows
A pillbox austerity
In stile of prison
As some how knew
Fangled
Yet as ode
Foundations still tower
Of yores and mind
As sum kind
Of ark
A texture
Of humanity
And what
Remainders
And reminders
Hour test
Meant to
Free those captive
And sentries
Of posterity

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POEM: Untouchable

This poem reflects on the divide between masculine and feminine ways of being in the world. One of the most stark examples is “incels” who are involuntarily celibate, often because they have a palpable misogyny that women find unattractive. The irony is that the universal need to connect with other human beings is often self-sabotaged by hypermasculinity.

Untouchable

He would have killed
For a tender touch
Whoa fully
For this very aim
He missed what
He coveted most

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POEM: Redeeming Coup on Pharaohs

God has a sense of humor. Sometimes pompous, hypocritical religionists get their religion handed to them on a plate by the disenfranchised who have a gift of accessing truth in strange places, redeeming that worthless scrip of others. The lords of this world barely have a clue regarding the nature of true religion.

Redeeming Coup on Pharaohs

The plantation proprietor
The slave master
Forced Christianity
As a kind
Of property
The enslaved never possessed
Even oddly discovering
A religion holy unused
Immanently better adopted
For the downtrodden
Than pharaohs

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POEM: What Superpower

Here is a poem about the invisibility of people who are unhoused and living on the streets.

What Superpower

Early on
His invisibility
Would come and go
Until anon
Involuntarily taken
For a ride
For granted
Fully
That feudal wish
Of only aspiring to be
A fly on the wall
Yet no such promotion in store
He had
No plays
No home
And out side
Absent in a crowd
Fruitlessly flagging
Passers buy
In some sort of alms race
And if as much
As pass the hat
Never a head
Efface
As good as gone
As if
A disembodied voice
Yet no celebrity for this ghost
He knew
With all that he was
That everything
Is passible

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POEM: An Eve with Netanyahu

As President Biden campaigns on a pro-democracy platform against the corrupt Donald Trump, he is tag teaming genocide in Gaza with his long-time friend, the corrupt Israeli PM Netanyahu, the “Bibi” brain and heart of the military onslaught and deadly siege on Palestinian civilians. This poem regards this hellish alliance, and goes out to the Palestinian people who struggle to even hope for bread and water, let alone democracy.

An Eve with Netanyahu

Darkness falls unto Gaza
Hellfire on the horizon
As far as the aye can see
Awe hell to the chief
In the AM
And beloved PM
Shalom begets shalom
As hello and goodbye
Greets with a kiss
Violence begets violence
As the buy and bye
Greets with piss
Where right and left
Are helled together
By a dead center
Of treacherous aims
If morality is bread
Israel is starving
If water is life
Israel is bone-dry
As well
Reckoning its settled
No rolling stones hear
That gimme
Shelter
Drunk with power
Helled as just
A shot away
All the time missing
Whatever their aims
Priceless love
Just
A kiss away

To better appreciate the Rolling Stones reference to “Gimme Shelter” you can listen to the song here.

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POEM: Compassion Sidelined

A poem for our collective denial of our responsibility to prevent genocide. Free Palestine! No one is free until all are free.

Compassion Sidelined

An aye for an aye
And a no for a know
A tooth for a tooth
And a truth fore a truth
A moment of distinction begging
A moment of extinction bugging
Rooting out violence
Or rooting on violence

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POEM: A Confession — For the Birds

I don’t have a lot of regrets in life. Still, one of the stupidest and cruelest things I ever did was as a kid when I shot dead with a BB gun a bunch of birds hanging out in a tree in my yard. I am not sure when regret set in, but this memory today serves as a reminder of all the unnecessary death inflicted on fellow beings. May we have the courage to be kind in all situations. May we not be chicken, even when that inescapable law of life and death — you are what you eat — leaves us, killing for no purpose but sport.

A Confession: For the Birds

12 year old boy
Aim true
But not today
17 birds
Fall to the ground
Without a man’s remembrance
Only fated regret
Of cruelty
For the birds

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